| Author |
Message |
    
Colt
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 29, 2002 - 9:26 pm: | 
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I have a Wilson "Little Wil" on the roof of my pickup. Now, I ain't braggin' but I've put quite a few green stampies into makin' her look good and, I reckon she does look pretty good. I was a little hesitant to put a radio in her unless I could come up with an antenna setup that looked and worked good.
My question is this. I'm thinking about spray painting the magnet base of the antenna the same color as the truck and painting the whip black. The paint for the base would be metalflake, matching the truck, but the black would be just plain black, of course. Natrually, I would not paint the underside of the base as that would probably give me problems with the ant staying put, and/or paint damage. You know the question, will it affect my SWR? Also, if I were to put a little beef behind it, say 250 or 300 watts (max. the ant. can handle) do you think the base would have any problem dissipating heat if it had a light coat of paint on it? I lean toward it not causing a problem. Especially if I didn't use power unless I'm moving; the wind helping cool the base. What do you say?
Colt |
Ncrebel
| | Posted on Monday, February 04, 2002 - 2:12 pm: |
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Hey,well I don't know about painting the base of the antenna but I kinda think it wouldn't dissipate heat as well as it should along with painting the whip part.I wouldn't pait the whip part simply because thats the transmit and recieve.Plus if you put that fire in the wire that wouldn't help it either because if I'm not mistakin the whip can get pretty hot when u put enough juice through it.To me a antenna like you're talkin about wouldn't look bad.Heck there's been show cars and trucks that have magnetic antennas on them.I once saw a Chevy Cheyanne I think it was that had a Wilson antenna with a HR2510 and a box inside.NICE |
Pcovington
| | Posted on Saturday, April 27, 2002 - 5:57 pm: |
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Painting the antenna should cause no problems as long as you don't paint the bottom of the magnet.
Basically the "Lil Wil" is a piece of junk. I would not put more than about 50 watts into it unless you want to heat that pitiful little loading coil up. It is not much better than a dummy load. The Wilson 1000 and 5000 mag mounts are much better. When Wilson came out with the "Lil Wil" my opinion of that company dropped considerably. |
409
| | Posted on Monday, April 29, 2002 - 2:22 am: |
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Painting the antenna won't hurt it as long as the paint does not contain METAL flakes such as aluminum. You can see why it might cause problems if you coat an insulator with a conductive coating . The coating could also change the "Q" of the loading coil at the base. |
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